![Good hair day for John Key - Ponytail-gate as dead as dodo](/pf/resources/images/placeholders/placeholder_l.png?d=791)
Good hair day for John Key - Ponytail-gate as dead as dodo
Anyone under the impression that John Key had it coming to him in Parliament yesterday must be sorely disappointed by what happened.
Anyone under the impression that John Key had it coming to him in Parliament yesterday must be sorely disappointed by what happened.
If Key wants to make life a lot easier, he should immediately seek leave to make a personal explanation when Parliament sits, writes John Armstrong.
John Key's claim that the "horsing around" was all meant to be light-hearted and part of the "fun and games" at the cafe does not wash, writes John Armstrong.
It is not raining on John Key and his colleagues. It is pouring, John Armstrong writes.
The manual is absolutely clear about the rules which should apply between a Cabinet minister and public servants prior to a byelection, writes John Armstrong.
The two Budget-related announcements risked giving every impression that National is running on empty, reckons John Armstrong.
Rather than being "unadjusted and unsustainable", the exchange rate may reflect the fact that the NZ economy is not quite the basket-case the Nats' opponents would wish to paint it, writes John Armstrong.
Winston Peters' triumph in the Northland byelection signals the most serious challenge he has mounted to National in two decades, writes John Armstrong.
Winston Peters cut a swathe through the wealthier parts of the Northland electorate in Saturday's byelection, securing the most votes in the National bastion of Kerikeri and matching the number cast....
A narrow win is about as good as it is going to get for John Key next Saturday night after the votes have been counted in that day's Northland byelection, writes John Armstrong.
Nearly 90 per cent of the 7500 new jobs created in the Northland region last year were full-time jobs, according to the office of Employment Minister Steven Joyce.
When Russel Norman announced he was standing down as the Greens' co-leader, his legacy to his party seemed pretty obvious.
Should New Zealanders have been kept in the dark about the 1080 threats for nearly four months? The answer, on balance, is yes, writes John Armstrong.
Yesterday's announcement is classic pork-barrelling, writes John Armstrong. It indicates National is seriously worried that Winston Peters may well carry off a victory.
Taking such an early lead over his National rival in the campaign will give Winston Peters' bandwagon even more momentum, writes John Armstrong. Peters' support registered at 35 per cent in the poll,
Herald political writer John Armstrong says the PM's decision to bypass the media when announcing his decision shows he is failing.
The PM's insistence that he was referring to all of the members of the multi-national force as the "club" defies logic, writes John Armstrong.
Try as it might, National has been unable to reframe this particular debate, writes John Armstrong. It's handicapped by the sheer complexity of its housing plan.
High levels of public apathy have given Key a reliable measure of the degree of public tolerance of his and National's less attractive attributes.
Normally, a new leader of the Opposition would relish the chance to boost his or her profile and start making some real waves through the platform offered by a byelection.
Russel Norman's decision to step down from the co-leadership is a crushing blow for a party still in recovery following its disappointing result in the last general election.
What if the Govt toiled night and day for years to create a market for the right to house the poor and downtrodden, only for no-one to bother to turn up when it finally opened?
It is difficult to erase the suspicion that the social housing policy is motivated by ideology as much as anything else, writes John Armstrong.
The strength of Nick Smith's language in his savaging of the RMA prompted immediate concern in the environmental lobby he was trying to manufacture a crisis where there wasn't one.
New Zealand voters can be cruel, ruthless and unforgiving - more so when they are made to feel stupid, writes John Armstrong.
The now-defunct pact between Hone Harawira's Mana Movement and Kim Dotcom's Internet Party was always a marriage of convenience. Probably too much so.
It was all rather shabby, shoddy and shameful. How else to describe the latest and one of the most flawed and consequently divisive pieces of anti-terrorist legislation to hit the statute books?
Gerry Brownlee is one of National's most level-headed, collected, unflappable and even-tempered Cabinet ministers.
John Key now describes his relationship with Cameron Slater as "not a proactive one" - an empty, but very useful phrase, writes John Armstrong.